City Har­bours in Trans­form­a­tion

The har­bour of Rotterdam moved sev­er­al times through­out the cen­tur­ies, look­ing for places which could accom­mod­ate its growth as well as the increas­ing size of ships. In the 1930s, new har­bour exten­sions were cre­ated on the north­ern shore in the west of the city. Most of the area served as fruit har­bour, where e.g. the orange juice sup­ply for the entire European hin­ter­land used to be trans­shipped.

In recent years, these har­bour activ­it­ies have star­ted to move even fur­ther west, closer to the North Sea. The Mer­we- and Vier­havens area is gradu­ally chan­ging its char­ac­ter, trans­form­ing from har­bour to cre­at­ive breed­ing ground. Many cre­at­ive com­pan­ies have settled in former har­bour build­ings. The muni­cip­al­ity pro­motes this devel­op­ment and facil­it­ates exper­i­ment­al pro­jects in the area. The M4H-area counts sev­er­al remark­able monu­ment­al build­ings, such as fact­ory build­ing HAKA and the Cit­rus Auc­tion, but also offers space for exper­i­ments, such as the world’s first float­ing farm.

Explore a har­bour area in full trans­ition, hous­ing port func­tions as well as maker spaces, cre­at­ive com­pan­ies and urb­an garden­ing pro­jects!